British Miners’ Strike 1984-5
This is an account of the British Miners’ strike. During the strike there has been no shortage of advice to the miners on how to run their strike from every Leftist clique. No doubt after the strike many academics will make a bomb with their books about the struggle. This though is meant in no way to be a definitive account. First of all the writer isn’t a miner, and at the time of writing the strike is still unresolved. Hopefully, one day a ‘first hand’ account will be written by a militant from the mining industry.
Get The Miners!
The Spring of 1984 saw the outbreak of an important and bitter strike in the coal mining industry which has now lasted a year. The spark was the announcement on March 6th by the National Coal Board (NCB) of the planned closure of 20 odd mines with the loss of over 20,000 jobs in one year alone. And this was to be the first instalment of a complete restructuring of the coal mining industry, with the aims of: 1. increasing profitability (through the discarding of pits requiring a high investment, the introduction of new technology etc.) and 2. breaking once and for all the power of the coal miners.
The miners have always been amongst the most class-conscious and militant elements of the British working class. They also possess tremendous industrial muscle because Britain still depends heavily on coal generated power. Coal powered the Industrial Revolution, which began in Britain. The British economy was built on coal.
Thanks to the North Sea oil fields Britain is today one of the worlds most important oil producing countries. During the Miners’ strike the Government has been able to avoid large scale power cuts (and has kept those there have been very quiet) through substituting oil for coal in power generation on a massive scale. This though at an enormous cost. Britain’s weak economy now depends on North Sea oil to keep it afloat (hence the panic on the money markets when oil prices are unstable). But the government sees the sacrifice of valuable oil sales revenue to defeat the miners as a ‘good investment’, no matter how expensive, (and anyway it will be the working class that will be handed the bill).
The Nuclear Option
Whilst Britain’s capitalism is trying to reduce the number of miners and mines it is ready to spend billions of pounds on the development of the nuclear option. And this has to be seen in the light of the fact that coal is Britain’s cheapest energy source. Electricity generated from coal is 50% cheaper than that generated from oil, much cheaper than nuclear energy leaving aside all environmental issues, and cheaper than North Sea gas.
What A Waste
Britain is very, very fortunate to have the fuel reserves it has. North Sea oil was found just when British capitalism most needed it. And Britain has coal reserves to last another 300 years! So the coal will still be there long after North Sea oil has been exhausted to pay Britain’s way internationally. Another generation will probably see the capitalists having to open up the pits again! This crazy energy policy by British Capitalism can only be explained by a desire to break the power of the relatively militant coal miners and ensure that workers cannot, by their indispensability to national energy production, threaten the Government of the day as the mineworkers did in 1974.
Of course, a defeat of the mine-workers, given their traditional position at the fore of the British workers movement, has enormous ramifications for the living standards, union rights and working conditions of all working people in Britain. Also the confrontation has to be seen as part of the general restructuring of capitalism worldwide which is tending to shift heavy and manufacturing industry to the developing countries, leaving the developed countries to undergo a new technological revolution which leaves to them the new technology and strategic industries.
NCB Prepared
With its announcement of the closure of 20 odd pits the NCB deliberately provoked the strike, confident of a victory because the conditions were not favourable to the miners. In fact the Government had been preparing for a show down with the miners for years. The leadership of the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) had seen it coming, but the nature of British trade unions is such that while in some cases the leadership can be quite left-wing the membership remains passive, and apathetic. Arthur Scargill, the NUM President, had called two national ballots of the union for strike action against the pit closures he said the NCB were preparing. Both times the membership did not give a mandate for strike action. The NCB of course said it had no plans to decimate the industry, and even awarded the NUM a pay rise well above the average without the NUM having to flex a muscle. The NCB was not quite ready yet.
The NCB chose to make its announcement of pit closures with Summer on the way, when coal demand for the national electricity grid is least.
A Productivity Agreement (introduced by the then Labour Government in 1977) had introduced an element of division in the miners ranks. Geological conditions in the mines vary. Thus, where coal is more easily extracted the miners can, with the Productivity Agreement, earn more money. Moderation is favoured because the mines have a more secure future (and this had a lot to do with the stand taken by the Nottinghamshire miners in the strike). When coal is more difficult to extract earnings are less, the future of the mine is more precarious and consequently the miners tend to be more militant, (obviously a generalization). The Productivity Agreement had allowed the NCB to build up huge stockpiles of mined coal with which to sit out a long strike.
Rank & File Spreads Strike
The strike began in the Yorkshire and Scottish coal fields where the miners are traditionally militant. The force behind the strike was the rank & file of the NUM. Gradually the strike was spread to other coal fields. At the start the NUM membership seem to have been split down the middle on the strike, one half for the other against; but little by little the flying pickets strengthened and extended the strike. By the Summer over 80% of the miners were out on strike.
The ‘Democrats’
As the strike spread there was a desperate campaign in the newspapers and on television calling for a national ballot of the NUM on the question of the strike. With this pseudo-democratic propaganda the boss class wanted to impede the spreading of the strike and weaken its momentum. The bosses liked the idea of a national ballot in this instance because it offered them the opportunity to isolate the less conscious miners from the influence of the militants, thus leaving them open to all the bosses anti-strike pressures. The fact that by now only a minority of miners thought a national ballot necessary was quietly forgotten as everybody, the NCB, Government, the Labour Party leadership, much of the Trade Union Congress and even some of the Trotskyist parties lectured the NUM on how to run its affairs. (The miners rejected the 1977 productivity agreement by national ballot by the way, but the NCB went ahead and imposed it anyway … What democrats to be lecturing the NUM!).
There was a well orchestrated campaign of defamation against the NUM and its President Scargill, was portrayed as a Leftist wrecker who had fooled or press-ganged tens of thousands of miners out on strike. (In actual fact when Scargill had tried to bring the miners out he failed on two previous occasions, it was the NCB who brought the miners out on strike). The miners themselves were portrayed as mindless thugs who went around hospitalizing poor defenceless policemen and scabs. All this with the aim of alienating support for the strike.
Nottinghamshire
In certain cases miners themselves swallowed (or parroted?) the bosses propaganda, above all in Nottinghamshire and the Midlands. The Notts. miners are traditionally moderate and the vast majority in this important coalfield (very productive) have scabbed during the strike. It’s a situation similar to 1926, when Nottinghamshire also carried on working when the miners struck for six months, the Notts. miners even going to the extent of forming a breakaway company union led by a Labour Party member of Parliament (Spencer). However, the Spencer Union did not last long due to its pathetic record of defence of its members interests, and there is no reason why any similar move undertaken by today’s working Miners would last any longer.
As was to be expected the NCB announced a scheme of ‘generous’ redundancy payments for miners with many years service – yet another attempt to sow division in the miners’ ranks. Daily the NCB bleated about mines in danger of permanent closure due to lack of maintenance during the strike etc.
‘Violence’
There have been bloody clashes between police and strikers and between strikers and scabs. Four miners have died on picket lines, a further seven have died as result of incidents related to the strike, thousands of miners and their supporters have been injured and arrested on picket lines.
Operation Strikebreaker
The police launched a nationally co-ordinated operation to prevent the pickets reaching the working mines. Nottinghamshire became a de facto Police State, and movement in all the coalfields was policed. Harassment and intimidation of strikers and their communities were the order of the day. The Government prepared all this after their defeat at the hands of the miners in 1974. Then too, in a national ballot the Notts miners had been against a strike, but had been pulled out by the striking majority. This time, national ballot or not, the Government was going to make sure the Notts miners produced vital coal.
In the Summer of ’84 the boss class was a bit worried by the militancy it had provoked and the strike had begun to bite. No-one, not even on the Left, and least of all the Government, had imagined the miners would stay out so long. For a time the powers that be were really worried.
Solidarity
However, it must be said that the strike has not been as effective as it could have been. Truth is that the Government had been preparing for this for years, whereas the strike has found the working class hopelessly ill prepared. Solidarity in the form of industrial action with the miners has been patchy. Some workers: railworkers, seamen and some power station workers have taken action in support of the miners, sometimes putting their own jobs on the line. But the trade union movement as a whole has failed miserably to support the strike.
Movement of coal was never completely halted, indeed transport union members were amongst those who kept the power stations supplied in the Summer. The Steelworkers union even co-operated with the British Steel Corporation to defeat the miners’ pickets which were trying to stop transportation of coal to the steel plants. The steelworkers were conned into believing that the best way of securing their jobs was to work hand in hand with the bosses, rather than making common cause with the miners.
Winter
During the Winter of 84/85 the strikers and their families have been on the defensive. Besieged by the State, and abandoned by most of the labour movement. Cold, hunger and mounting debts have taken their toll and many miners have been starved back to work. (You can’t lump those miners who have gone back in the last few months because of hardship together with the Scabs who have betrayed their class from the start).
Gentlemen Of The TUC
Reformist unionism, as embodied in the TUC, has not been able to act in a way which would have assured the miners, and the entire working class, a victory. Vertical unions, run from the top down, make for an apathetic membership, and of course when the union membership is not class conscious the bureaucrats have an excuse to wash their hands of the matter. So, the miners have been left to fight almost unaided for a year. Conclusive proof, if any more was needed, that the TUC is a paper tiger.
Lessons To Be Learnt
Collections by miners and their supporters on the streets and in the workplaces have raised millions of pounds from ordinary working people. This has sustained the strikers and their families this long. But the key to a complete victory from day one was always concrete solidarity in other branches of industry, and that was never forthcoming in a consistent manner. For this kind of solidarity to have materialized there would have had to have been union structures controlled by class conscious rank and file. Nothing less will do. That has to be the biggest lesson of the miners strike for every serious working class militant.
Class War
That lesson has to be learnt and acted upon now. We have to be as prepared and organised for the fight as the bosses have been for this strike. They made use of their courts to hamstring the union’s work. They have used their thugs in the police to break bones and intimidate. They have used the media to isolate and demoralize the strikers. They have lied and misinformed at every turn, as with their fantastic ‘drift back to work’ figures flashed across the television screens night after bloody night. No doubt they would have been prepared to bring out the Army if they had to. This is not a game, where the majority of the workers can leave the miners to fight alone for a year and the leaders of the labour movement can prattle on about ‘violence’ by the strikers and how there should have been a national ballot.
This is CLASS WARFARE, and if the working class is not prepared to wage that war it will go down to defeat after defeat. However the strike now ends, one thing is certain: majority of the miners and their families have put up a marvellous fight, with all the odds and the full might of the state ranged against them. The miners’ struggle has been followed by workers around the world. From Australia to Poland, from Sweden to Italy workers have supported the miners with donations of money, food and clothing, and even in some cases with industrial action. However the strike ends history will judge the miners and their families to have won the ultimate victory.
The pickets, the people who have organised the soup kitchens, the miners and their supporters who have collected money the length and breadth of the country and abroad, even the strikers’ children, all those people who have been touched by this strike will never be the same. It must be remembered as a year of courageous struggle and an example to every class conscious member of the working class in the World.
Victory to the Miners!
by Dino Marcone.
New World: International Newsbulletin of the Northern IWA. No.2, Spring 1985
The issue also contained the following short:
Coal Strike
At a national delegte conference held in London on March 3rd, it was agreed to call off the coal strike and resume work on Tuedsay 5th. The fight shall be carried on in the mines.